Feats and How to Ruin Them

[Transformer]

I’ve seen a lot of fighting about skills, but not much about feats as such. That scares me because I tremble for the fate of feats in D&D Next much more than for the fate of skills.

Basically, I like feats. Putting all manner of little extra abilities in a special class of their own, where they can be easily searched for and picked up by any character, and balanced against one another, is a fine idea. But damn do I hate me a lot of feats in 3e and 4th.

There’s a lot of things I don’t want to see within 100 miles of the feat system, things I think most people can agree to hate. No feat taxes. Please lord no feat taxes. +1 to attack? 1000 years in purgatory to whoever designs such a feat. The math should--must--work from day 1, but even if it doesn’t, I would rather see it stay broken than have a feat tax retroactively inserted into the game in a splatbook or the errata. Second, no trap options. If the balance of a feat is even in question, even a little bit, please Wizards, please, just leave it out. Just chuck it right out the window. Better to lack it completely than have it in there punishing new players or aiding munchkins.

But there’s something else I want (or, really, don’t want) from feats in D&D Next, and this is my true reason for making this post. I don’t want the feat system to carry any thematic or mechanical weight at all. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying I don’t want feats to be flavorful and thematic. I want every single feat included in a book to be flavorful and thematic. What I don’t want is for the system to rely on feats to satisfy any character concept, or archetype, or fighting style.

Again and again I’ve heard suggestions for using the feat system to bear some serious weight for the system. Don’t want races to limit people’s class option too much, but also want people who want really elfish elves, or really dwarfy dwarves, to get what they want? Why, racial feats is the answer, of course! Basic elves just have a few minor racial abilities, but people who want really elfish elves can take a few elfish racial feats! Wizards are going to be vancian? Fine, but some people want ‘at-will’ and ‘encounter’ spells too! The solution? Feats, of course! Those people can buy at-will and per-encounter ‘spells’ as feats! Or back when 4th edition was in the works: 3rd edition’s multiclassing system has serious flaws? Just make multiclassing a matter of feats! People who want to multiclass can “feat” into other classes! Don’t want a full skill system for simplicity’s sake, but want people to be able to specialize in horseback riding or Olympic diving or pie eating without having to take a particular class or theme? Why, you know the answer: feats, of course! They can take horseback riding extraordinaire as a feat! I know I’ve seen even more examples of this mentality before, this “can’t see exactly how to fit concept x into the system, so use feats feats feats!”

To that I say: No no no no no no no no NO NO NO! Do! Not! Want! Please don’t do this, Wizards. I would hate needing to take certain feats to satisfy a basic character concept, or just to gain non-daily resources as a Wizard. Every time I gain a feat, I want to be able to flip through the rulebook to see what looks coolest; I do not want to sit down to make a character and think “well, I want to play a really dwarfish wizard who throws around fire blasts like showers in springtime, but to do that I need to take these 3 dwarven racial feats and these 2 wizard spell feats, so there goes all excitement in feat selection for the next 10 levels…”

What I’m saying it, I want to be able to make every type of character imaginable, both in terms of flavor and in terms of mechanics, without having to so much as glance at the feat list. Why? Because I want feats to be extra. I want them to be special. I want them to be little peripheral spheres of awesome. I want to get excited when I look at the feat list. I do not want them to be my basic way of accessing core mechanics and character archetypes. You don't get feats very often: every other level in 4e, less in 3rd. No feat should ever be necessary to my concept; every feat should add something unnecessary but awesome to it.

I bring this up because, as I said, I've seen a lot of people (in discussions of other issues) suggest use of the feat system to cover some very basic character details and mechanics (see this thread), but I've only seen a few people say "whoa there, please don't do that, for feats' sake!" I think the issue deserves its own thread.

If I had my way, I’d want a very small feat list. I would love, absolutely love, to see only 30 or so feats in the PHB, and only 10 or so in a given splatbook. The 30 (10) best feats anyone at Wizards can come up with, every one of them equally viable and well balanced, every one of them interesting mechanically and thematic, and every one of them totally nonessential to any fundamental character type (If nothing else, a shorter feat list would make building a new character much more pleasant than it was in 3e or 4th, where there’s literally hundreds if not thousands of feats to look through). If I’m gonna see a 3 feat chain that goes “+1 to armor class against one target,” “+2 to armor class against one target,” and “+4 to armor class against one target,” please, just shoot me now. If I see “here’s the 3 feats you need to spend your precious feat slots on if you want to multiclass” I might just crawl into the corner and cry. I suppose I wouldn’t mind a feat that functions as an at-will spell for a wizard ( or a feat that adds a little more elfishness to your elf), as long as that wizard has access to plenty of at-will spells without buying feats; as long as she does not have to spend precious feat slots just to attain the basic archetype of “wizard who can shoot fire all day.” I don’t even want feats to be essential to making a fighter who trips people, or sunders their weapons; or at least, I only want it to cost 1 feat to get good at such things, not a chain of 2-4 feats.

Am I being unreasonable here? Does anyone else see the same problem I see, or am I imagining it? Am I just totally bass ackwards? What do you think?

 

[Ratskinner]

Am I being unreasonable here? Does anyone else see the same problem I see, or am I imagining it? Am I just totally bass ackwards? What do you think?

Well, I think it sounds like feats are going to represent bigger chunks of character ability than they have so far. If that's good or bad...I dunno. While I sympathize with some of your feelings, I'm not sure what you suggest can be accomplished by sticking with a feat system that's too similar to the previous editions. With a small list of small character features...what's the point? Now, I could see small lists of feats for each class, but a short list of universal feats could run out of interesting options really fast. Its all really hard to say without seeing the rules yet.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Am I being unreasonable here? Does anyone else see the same problem I see, or am I imagining it? Am I just totally bass ackwards? What do you think?

No, I think you are being plenty reasonable. I'll agree on almost every account.

Just about the only thing I'll disagree with you about is the idea of "magical feats" granting at-will spells being a bad idea. Honestly, I think that sort of thing is rather what feats should be, especially if you open things up so they are not class specific and even Fighters and Rogues can take them. Similarly, having powerful weapon attack skills be available as feats for any class to use would be equally good. These are the kinds of things feats should be, if you ask me. Options, rather than boring bonuses or the like.

I understand the desire to not want to take said feats to be an at-will mage, but I think that desire should be focused more towards asking for a non-Vancian spellcasting class or some other mechanism, rather than preventing the flame javelin style of feat from existing.

Still, I do agree that feat taxes, feats-as-multiclassing, racial feats necessary to getting a race's flavor across, class-feature feats (that means you, 3E Fighter), and so on are all sources of problems for the feat system, and are better off abandoned. I think I've said the same about many suggestions for how to implement themes... Class stuff should be a part of classes, racial stuff should be a part of races, theme stuff should be a part of themes, and only things that can only be done with feats should be reserved for feats.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

That's mostly reasonable. We may not get it, but it would be nice if we did.

I'll go you one further. When they are making up their list of feats, the early part should be pretty expansive and broad. You know, when you are brainstoming, just keep everything. Then they get more serious in the editorial stage, and they cut out the grossly under or over powered stuff, the lame stuff, the "should have been a racial ability" stuff. And they get their "final" list.

Then just before they turn this in to be typeset, Stupendous Man bursts into the building, rapidly scans the list with his brilliant mind, and uses his laser eyes to burn out every single feat that gives a +N to any d20 roll--and most any other roll, too. Good, bad, or indifferent, they all burn. Then having saved the day again, he hands back the list, and they go to press with the 30 to 40 feats that were worth keeping.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I hope they go for something very different from what you want. However, get rid of most feat prerequisites, or dramatically lessen them. No reason to have long chains (two prior feats maximum), unless it's a really, really nice feat. I also want a lot more feats than you do. Probably around 200-250 is my cap, though. No more from there. As always, play what you like

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Ok, I want feats to be included in the math. I don't want them to just be other bonuses.

I want weapon Focus +1 to hit.
I want signiture spell, all sorts of others...

 

[trancejeremy]

The trouble I had with the metamagic feats in 3.x is they tended to make spellcasters even more powerful (and flexible).

As is, they were already more powerful than non-casters at high levels, and the feats just made them even more so. Not to mention the higher levels were more reachable, and many of the downsides of spells and such were removed (like 5th level Teleport possibly being fatal).

I think really that feats should be something that isn't built into the class itself. Something extra and something everyone can find useful.

Take the fighter feats and build them into the class itself, or possibly into the weapons - if they use rapiers, they get finesse stuff, or greatswords or axes, cleaving abilities.

 

[GM Dave]

If they are going with feats then I'd like to avoid them being the 'add on power'.

This has been the past trouble with Feats as they were 'awarded' by level and they kept adding extra power with each feat to the base class. Feats would further add power on to previous feats making them even more powerful (and essential to some 3.5 builds like Pun-Pun).

---------------------------

Instead, I would like feats to be more like options that you use to swap components on the character class.

If you are a fan of Samurai literature and like the idea of drawing your sword and making a strike in the same motion; then, you would choose a feat to replace your basic sword swing with an Iaijutsu draw.

If you are a fan of priestly healing in combat then you might choose to replace your basic strike with Pacifist which makes your healing better but you take a vow not to strike someone that has not attempted to hurt you.

Feats are thus a give and a take feature where you give up or change something that you have for a different version. This allows the person that doesn't want to use feats to know they are reasonably similar to the person with fifteen feats.

The person with feats is different but they are not 'super person' compared to the person who did not select feats.

 

[Li Shenron]

What I don’t want is for the system to rely on feats to satisfy any character concept, or archetype, or fighting style.

To that premise, I certainly agree, although I mean this in terms of not having to rely on feats as long as you don't want your e.g. fighting style to develop to mastery compared to what other characters of the same level do. If you want to get that advantage, I think a price to pay is necessary.

Don’t want races to limit people’s class option too much, but also want people who want really elfish elves, or really dwarfy dwarves, to get what they want? Why, racial feats is the answer, of course! Basic elves just have a few minor racial abilities, but people who want really elfish elves can take a few elfish racial feats! Wizards are going to be vancian? Fine, but some people want ‘at-will’ and ‘encounter’ spells too! The solution? Feats, of course! Those people can buy at-will and per-encounter ‘spells’ as feats! Or back when 4th edition was in the works: 3rd edition’s multiclassing system has serious flaws? Just make multiclassing a matter of feats! People who want to multiclass can “feat” into other classes! Don’t want a full skill system for simplicity’s sake, but want people to be able to specialize in horseback riding or Olympic diving or pie eating without having to take a particular class or theme? Why, you know the answer: feats, of course! They can take horseback riding extraordinaire as a feat! I know I’ve seen even more examples of this mentality before, this “can’t see exactly how to fit concept x into the system, so use feats feats feats!”

To that I say: No no no no no no no no NO NO NO! Do! Not! Want! Please don’t do this, Wizards. I would hate needing to take certain feats to satisfy a basic character concept, or just to gain non-daily resources as a Wizard. (...)

Feats are (since their introduction in 3ed) simply pure modularity for character design. They cannot be out of 5ed, although their exact form or name doesn't have to be the same as in previous editions.

If you don't have a system like feats, you are forced to have more rules available to everyone by default (imagine e.g. 3ed Power Attack and similar combat feats turned into combat actions that everyone can do). This is still fine, a little more complexity in the game but if the group can take it then no problem. However in such a case you are making the options available to everyone, so you cannot push those options up in power unless you have other options that do the same for other character archetypes and classes; e.g. if you "give" all combat tactics feats for free by making them combat actions instead of feats, that's going to be benefit only the fighting-types, so you should compensate the others for example by turning all metamagic feats into standard casting options. More complexity and more potential balance problems. I do think it can work if the players are good... but feats are a safer system as a default.

---

Another example, what do you suggest to do with racial archetypes, the elvish elf and dwarfy dwarf? Racial feats would mean that player #1 who wants more "elvish-looking powers" will choose a few racial feats, while player #2 who still plays an elf but is fine with the starting abilities will invest his feats in something else.

Now take away racial feats. How are you going to grant extra elvish stuff to player #1? You will other grant them for free by default, in which case player #2 would be a fool not to get them too but then player #1 will feel like he's not really "more elvish" than the other elves in the game, and you're back to square 1. OR you will introduce a new mechanic for racial extras (that can eventually be exchanged with something else but guess what...?) and in this case you'll have one more mechanic in the game, when you could have just used the same mechanic you already have for other stuff and is intrinsecally flexible, i.e. feats.

-----------

EDIT: I also want to point out that feats are superbly flexible with their modularity: you can totally choose how many (regular) feats each PC should have, and whatever the choice the game maintains balance across the characters. Think that 1 feat every 3 levels is too little? Grant them 2 every 3 levels, once per level, or even 2/level. Hate feats? Grants zero (regular) feats to everyone. Heck, you can even grant feats as treasure, e.g. to reward the players for accomplishing some pretty neat target in the campaign.

The only problem is if some specific class uses feats already for balancing against the others (mostly Fighter, Wizard and Rogue in 3ed). That makes this customization process less neat, because clearly you can't ignore also the fighter bonus feats, and if you grant more feats to everyone then in proportion this is still a lesser benefit for fighters. So this is the only thing I hope 5e won't do... use bonus feats to balance classes against each other.

 

[Hassassin]

Mostly I agree, but I disagree that feats are a bad way to give wizards At-Wills. If you want At-Wills without feats, you should probably start with a Warlock or something.

As for whether 30 is a good number... That depends on the scope of the PHB. If the PHB is 128 pages it's probably a good number that can fit in 3-5 pages. If we get another 300 page PHB, there's room for more.